


now towards you

by Livali



Category: Dangan Ronpa - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, F/F, Soulmate au too, the tokomaru is barely there
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-18
Updated: 2020-11-18
Packaged: 2021-03-10 01:14:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,200
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27615395
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Livali/pseuds/Livali
Summary: You can’t just do this, Aoi says weakly. You can’t say you’re in love with me.Kyoko’s mouth is close enough that she feels it move.Too late.or;Asahina Aoi doesn't have a soulmate.
Relationships: Asahina Aoi/Kirigiri Kyoko, Ikusaba Mukuro/Maizono Sayaka, Minor or Background Relationship(s), Naegi Makoto/Togami Byakuya
Comments: 16
Kudos: 59





	now towards you

**Author's Note:**

> friends held me at gunpoint, made me watch them play thh and now i adore these two. i love sakuraoi, but kirihina barely has any content so i took some liberties. this was originally posted on discord as a 1k words weekly thing, but i've compiled it, made some modifications and uploaded it as a standalone piece. enjoy.
> 
> ikuzono appears around 2k. naegami around 3.5k or so.
> 
> insp: yours truly – composure

Aoi is fifteen when she finds out that she doesn’t actually have a soulmate.

Or that’s what she thinks, at least.

It’s _rare_ , incredibly so, even by today’s standards; a tattoo should’ve shown up somewhere on her body some time ago, and as far as she knew, the latest time it should’ve appeared was around thirteen to fourteen years old.

Her parents almost recoiled away from her when they found out, and well, it kind of stung—not the soulmate part—but she put on a brave face and decided _so what, that’s not a big deal_. They dissuaded her away from that mindset at first, because having no soulmate, in their words, was ‘missing out the biggest thing in your life’.

And well, the biggest misfortune too, apparently.

You’re supposed to meet your soulmate’s eyes, the tattoo would be given life and it would feel like home, her dad says. A sense of belonging, a place to call your own, and the inerasable ink on your skin is a reminder of that. You’re such a sweet girl, why did it have to be you?

I don’t get what the big deal is, she would whine back, it’s not like having a soulmate is better than winning a swimming competition or something. I’ll do _fine_. I’m _fine._

Her dad would laugh, and Aoi would decide not to comment on how forced it sounded. You’re so strong, he’d admit, if you did have a soulmate, I’m sure they’d be happy to be your friend, or well, whatever they want both of you to be. Yuta and Sakura would say the same thing.

(“Dad,” she whines again, “I’m A-Okay, I really don’t mind! They know I don’t too. Soulmates have never been the first thing on my mind, you know? Papa would think so too.”

“Yeah,” he said, “you’re amazing like that. But eh, you know, sometimes it would be nice to look at a part of yourself and be reminded of a thing you will come to love.”)

Aoi understood what he meant, or her other dad for that matter. But it’s not like her world was going to end just because she didn’t have a soulmate or anything, right?

She’ll get her own friends, tattoo or no tattoo. She’s not bound to the universe or something anyway, no matter how much it hurt to think about.

_She would look at the purple hyacinths in her neighbour’s garden, and it adds color to her cheeks in a way that only she should recognize. Her fathers would shrug, and she would brush it off. No, no, there was nothing there._

Yeah. That was all there is to it.

* * *

Aoi is seventeen.

There’s got to be something else in the works, she whispers to the mirror one night, because this didn’t make any sense in the slightest.

(See, see here, the thing is—

There was literally no other reason for violet to be her favorite color. _Red_ was her favorite color; her closet was filled to the brim with so much jackets and sweaters and other clothes by that color, for crying out loud!

Soulmates but also _soulmates_. Whatever that meant. That’s what the internet says. It’s all hazy and unclear and the words are lost to paragraphs that make little sense the more she reads.

Soulmates change, the same way people do. The soul chooses to love different people in the same way they change as time moves on.

But there were instances, very rare instances, where this wasn’t the case. Though there weren’t much records online to clarify what these were.

These were myths. Vague ones.)

Sometimes, some days, late into the hours of the evening when she should be sleeping, she would try hard to think just _why_ it was the way it was. She knows the universe is always full of tricks—she was one of them—but nothing could really prepare her from feeling the way she did when she started thinking about it.

Her mind would keep its corners clean. Tidy, uncluttered. Like it was waiting for something to occupy the empty space. _This feels right_ , her soul would say, _this feels just right._

She liked violet.

She adored it, even.

She adored them like how people looked on fondly at the umbra of the sky on sunsets. Like nightshades, like lavenders in a thriving meadow. Think of how they bloom, how the stems twine around her ankles, how the petals press against her palms.

_Oh, she would look at the hyacinths, and think of how easy they were to touch, to breathe life into, and to call it hers._

This, _this_ wasn’t just a normal kind of adoration. It was like, like, like—

—it was a reminder.

Of something old. Something older.

(Like it was only meant for hers to love.)

She doesn’t get it.

Yet.

Hopefully.

Well, hey, academics wasn’t her thing. Sakura, and her newer friend, Sayaka, would always help her out (it was more on Sakura helping, and Sayaka being tutored along with her) so she can stay on the swim team, but this was something she was _determined_ to figure out, you know?

(“I don’t get it,” she says, sprawled out on Sayaka’s bed, and the mentioned girl along with Sakura stare right back at her, “purple and violet and whatever else? I like it a lot but don’t remember why? What’s going on?”

“They’re nice colors,” Sakura responds soothingly, “I think it’s cute.”

“Yeah!” Sayaka nods. “It’s not like they’re bad colors or something. I think they fit you just fine.”

She hums.

“If you guys say so.”)

Maybe, maybe she will grow out of it.

Will she?

(Aoi actually can’t see how she would grow out of it. In fact, older, when she’s older, she’s grown to love that specific color more.

Maybe not the clothes, red was still definitely for her, but there’s always something violet or lavender in her room so she always knows.

Like it was meant to be there.)

She only finds out why years later.

* * *

They meet on a Monday evening.

It was autumn, under the orange skies of the waning dusk.

It wasn’t the best first encounter she’s had with anyone—if she counts bumping into a stranger and almost spilling her hot chocolate onto said stranger’s clothes an encounter that is—and well, it wasn’t exactly her best day so she wasn’t paying that much attention.

Her confusion hardly stops there, because opposed to her excessive string of profanities and pleads for forgiveness was an apology with the softest, prettiest voice she’s heard in _years_ , and despite what’s transpired between them, it somehow manages to sound sincere while having so little emotion behind it.

The words hang in the air and sink low into her chest; the inflection behind them is something familiar in a way she _knows_ who it’s from—which shouldn’t make sense at all, because she’s never met this person before in her entire life.

She hardly has time to think on why so, because the musky scent of the campus library and something she guesses as coffee overwhelms her senses and throws her world stumbling away from its own orbit—comforting and welcoming and new and somehow manages to feel like home—and every thought prior to that moment simply turns to mush in her head.

(She is five and watching her papa throw beans in the coffee maker, she’s eleven on an adventure in the local library, she’s sixteen fresh from a swimming competition and getting mocha donuts from her favorite bakery, she’s nineteen and walking away from the latest human anatomy lecture—and the smells persist, always there.

And somehow each and every time they were there, they reminded her of something old. Ageless. Something she should know.)

“Sorry. I wasn’t paying attention. Do you need help getting up?”

Aoi was about to reply, another apology and a proper response on the tip of her tongue—nah sorry, it’s my fault, I can do it on my own just fine—when she looks up and trails her eyes over their legs and their chest and to the lavender hair with the low ponytail cascading all the way to their spine then to their _eyes_ —

And every word just dies on her lips.

They’re the most gorgeous shade of lilac she’s ever seen.

The world stills.

There’s no sound. No path forward. No college. No crowds. No time. No universe. The last one stands right in front of her, actually, in the form of a tall girl with a briefcase at her side, studded gloves, black coat, pants, boots and white dress shirt.

She’s staring at her, staring the _exact same way_ Aoi is, and her eyes, _her eyes_ , shine brilliantly like gems bound into jewelry, like the reflections of lightning dancing across water—the purple is so pretty that it reminds her of somewhere she’s been at before, it’s something old, like a place of belonging, like—

Like _home_.

“ _Whoa_.” She breathes out. “Where have _you_ been?”

Aoi is twenty years old, a little before twenty-one, and she’s done her fair share of flirting even before she went here; but while what’s left of the rational part of her brain tell her she shouldn’t sound like a frat boy fresh out of homecoming, it’s like these were the only words she has to say.

“What?” The woman asks softly, and she swears she’s heard it before. Somewhere. Some place. It feels like something old. Older.

Like at the breadth of another lifetime.

She can’t pinpoint where and when the change begins, but something _happens_ in the woman’s eyes that makes them soften (like rows of alpinas on the first March daybreak) and they meet her own fully, and it feels like her entire world, save for the girl right in front of her, is disappearing right before her eyes.

“Um—uh,” Aoi stands and scratches the back of her head nervously, “I’ve never seen you around here? I hang around the library a lot with a few of my friends, but I haven’t seen you before.”

The girl shifts her briefcase into another spot, as though she was getting an easier and better view—and Aoi can’t help but think how perfectly the almost black coat belonged on her form as much as the dark ribbon tied around her lilac hair.

And the contrast is familiar.

Like something beyond the reach of time.

“I see.” The woman says, almost breathlessly, “I keep to myself and study in a table all the way at the back of aisle ten. That may be why you haven’t seen me.”

“Oh, that’s cool,” she sounds so close to desperate. “I’m always near the entrance. I can see why.”

Aoi gulps.

“What’s your name?”

The woman’s lips peel into a small smile.

_She’s everything_ — _all of it. All these figures and all these faces. Aoi would look at the silhouettes in this room, and they were all purple hyacinths blooming on the first day of Beltane. They were beautiful._

“Kirigiri Kyoko.” She—Kyoko says. “Criminal Justice. Third year.”

“Kirigiri,” Aoi echoes bashfully, mindlessly tracing kanji with her thumb on her palm, and the name sounds like the most perfect string of notes she’s heard in a long time. “It’s Asahina.”

She giggles.

“Asahina Aoi. You can call me Hina if you want to. Sport and Exercise Science, and I’m also in my third year.”

“Asahina.” Kyoko murmurs shyly. “Hi.”

“Hi,” she whispers back, also timid and jittery and she’s pretty sure it’s showing. Sure, she’s met a lot of pretty girls here and there but _wow_ —Kyoko’s the most beautiful woman she’s ever seen; there’s no question that she and her were—

“Wait,” Aoi says, faltering. “Do you have a tattoo…?”

Kyoko’s eyes widen a bit, and she visibly swallows.

“No.”

“What? That’s—” Aoi starts, but stops midway, “that’s just not right. I don’t have a tattoo either. That’s weird.”

She’s _not_ supposed to have a soulmate.

Kyoko bites the bottom of her lip. “It is.”

So why does she feel this way?

Well, at least she doesn’t feel like she’s intruding on anything special.

“So,” she starts again, “we’re not each other’s soulmate.”

Aoi laughs.

“Wow, in fact, we both don’t even have one.”

They stare at each other for a while and _oh,_ her heart is clenching, really painfully, as her brown curls whip in the gentle breeze.

Kyoko looks ahead.

_Oh, how hard it was, to breathe life into these hyacinths and call it hers._

“It’s strange.” The woman says, the sadness visible on her smile and Aoi knows she’s mirroring it on her own. It’s like the earth below her feet was shifting; she was lost in a garden and the vines, so full of thorns, crawl so easily between the cracks of her fingers. “With how the concept of soulmates work around here…”

Kyoko turns back to her, grin still present but the expression is almost wistful, and Aoi bites so deeply at the inside of her cheek it almost draws blood.

“Why wasn’t it you?”

* * *

It doesn’t stop them from being friends.

Honestly, it’s not even close.

They get close very quickly. Over the next few weeks, texts became calls lasting for hours at a time, and Aoi spends so much of her days in a daze because of it—it’s come to the point where even Sakura gives her funny looks from across their shared dorm room, probably because of the dumb smile on her face every time she sees Kyoko’s name on her phone screen.

She’s behind on a deadline because of her. She doesn’t care.

Actually, she doesn’t even think about hiding it, and many more days later all her friends were bothering her about it.

“It was like,” she says with a dopey grin, and Sayaka who’s sitting across her looks like she’s on the verge of losing it at the expression on her face. “I swear it was the only thing left for me to do.”

“Sounds like a crush,” Mukuro says quietly beside her, reaching out to hold Sayaka’s hand and caressing the beautifully tattooed rows of flowers that lied there, “that’s what happened to me when I first met Saya.”

“Hey now,” the idol laughs, “I was worse, but yeah, you get the point.”

It’s more than that, she thought of saying, we’re not soulmates.

We’re not made for each other, she thought of saying too, but I met her and I already thought of taking out my phone, making her my new contact, and calling her even if I never knew her name.

(It’s like I’ve been waiting for a while.

But that’s the thing. We were meant for no one, not each other.)

* * *

Aoi’s lived in the college dorms since her freshman year, a good two to three years, but somehow it’s Kyoko—comfortable in her little apartment at downtown Tokyo—who knows the best spots around the school for peace and quiet.

There’s this spot at the greenhouses that turn into something immaculate when it’s five in the morning, a neat picnic table on the roof of the Science building, and even a hidden room in the library behind aisle twenty seven on the second floor. Kyoko knows where to go each and every time they meet up; though the sights to see on the campus are not infinite, Aoi thinks she’ll always find her way to something new.

“Kyoko,” She says simply, hands travelling in lines over a bunch of flowers (wisteria, nightshade, rose, daffodil), admiring how the flowerets thrive as if two deities were in matrimony, and she pictures in her head laureates making poems and people throwing celebrations with gusto—but she, _they_ , they are alone, only nature bearing witness to this moment in time, mindfully crafted to be made into their own. “Hey _.”_

Kyoko turns to look at her. “Hina?” 

“Love.” She elaborates, beaming and breathless. “What do you think it looks like?”

(It’s three in the afternoon, they’re on a break, and the greenhouse today is radiant and the plants reflect the sunlight. She’s distracted by a distraction, the smell of lilacs overwhelming her senses and she succumbs to it willingly.)

“That’s subjective,” Kyoko says, and if Aoi looked hard enough she can see the upward curl to her lips (rare and tiny but treasured more so), and how even the brightness of it alone isn’t enough to outdo the wit in her eyes and gardens itself. “Is this a rhetorical question?”

“Who knows?” She laughs, walking towards Kyoko’s direction. “Yes, I want to see you show off that big brain of yours.” Leaning forward, she puts her hands on her hips. “That’s exactly what I want. You talking about the vast knowledge I don’t have.”

“We have different areas to excel in. Different majors. You’re smart in yours.”

Aoi giggles. “I was joking.”

Kyoko chuckles and only tells her _I know_. Quick and throaty and it makes her want to hurl.

“What does it for you?” The law student shifts on her seat, a knowing glint in her gaze, and Aoi can’t help but marvel at how the shine of the afternoon sunlight makes her friend stand out against the florets. “Getting me to ramble or getting to sneak a peek at my notes while I’m rambling?”

“You noticed that?” Aoi barely recognizes the laugh that leaves her own lips. “I swear, nothing gets past you. It’s just—I’ve never seen what a law student’s notes look like before.”

“What do you think of it now that you’ve seen it then?”

“You’re a nerd.”

Kyoko snorts.

“No, wait.” She giggles, sitting on the chair next to Kyoko’s and waving one of her hands out and about until it ‘somehow’ lands on her friend’s own (which the woman doesn’t object to or move away from, at all). “Future detective, right. Oh my gosh, you’re a _super_ nerd.”

“ _Super_ nerd?” Kyoko says with a small smirk, and her gloves are tracing constellations on her palms. Aoi thinks it’s unbelievably warm. “I’ve studied crime causation and many more for years and all I get called is a super nerd.”

“Yeah, but in a good way, you know?”

“Still.”

“It’s not like you’ve been studying law for almost a hundred years and now you’re only graduating on your deathbed or something,” She quips, and finds that the big smile on her face is aching. A good sort of aching. “Anyways. What about my question earlier? I’m serious.”

“About love?” Kyoko blinks. “That’s not a light subject… give me time to gather my thoughts. Can you wait for me?”

Her instinctive reply—the most baffling for today—is ‘always’.

I’m always waiting for you.

“Yeah,” she says instead, “I can.”

(Soon, she’ll want to forget about the thought. And later, much, much later, she’ll decide it was something to laugh about in her sleep.)

“If you love someone the world has told you not to,” Kyoko starts, “then maybe that’s what love would look like.”

_These hyacinths will bloom soon. She thinks she’ll be able to call them hers by then._

(“Or at least,” Kyoko says on the walk to her evening class, and Aoi swings their joined hands back and forth, “it’s when you glance at people and think, ‘oh, that’s what it is’, and say this is what love looks like should it exist in the first place.”)

“I’m surprised.”

“Hm?” Kyoko hums. “What do you mean?”

“I thought,” Aoi smiles genuinely at her, and it’s returned just as earnestly, “I thought you were gonna start talking about the soulmate tattoos or something. That’s what everyone always says.”

“I know,” Kyoko says quietly, “I thought I had it all figured out, you know? No tattoo, nothing to worry about then.”

Me too, Aoi would say.

Rather, she asks something else, and for once, not thinking much of it at all.

(Out of sight. Out of mind.)

“What changed?”

The evening light catches fire in her lilac hair, the streetlights swirl into patterns of Aoi’s world dissolving, and Kyoko smiles, giving her hand a gentle squeeze.

“A lot of things.”

* * *

Curiosity eats at her. Aoi doesn’t last long.

“Why crime? Why be a detective?” She asks on a rainy Saturday, and Kyoko’s eyes narrow in a way that suggests she was listening, “what about it makes your skin crawl, in the good way?”

Kyoko tells her.

I just want to see the truth of things, she says, I want to find it, to hold it, to touch it and run my hands over it, beneath it, inside it, all of it. Kyoko looks at her so intensely, and in that moment Aoi thought that maybe the world would be a little better with good and motivated people like her.

The law student never blinked once, now that she notices. Kyoko’s mouth curls at the corners in muted delight the longer her chattering gets, and all Aoi does, even if she understood only a fraction of what Kyoko’s saying, is stare back and listen in wonder.

Kyoko wasn’t exactly a zealous studier for a third year, and she gets commendable averages for her classes anyway. She was all calm and cool, drive and commitment, but in a way that it inspires even if it isn’t advertised. All this, this was real, whole, _her_. There is so much to Kirigiri Kyoko she wants to unmask, discover. Even if she’s only known her for months.

“Then what?” She whispers, piercing into Kyoko’s lilac eyes. “What’s your next big mystery?”

Kyoko only says, “You,” and smiles like she’s seen the future more than once.

Aoi almost forgets about everything then and there.

* * *

One day she meets a pair of men at the café she likes to frequent, they happen to be two of Kyoko’s closest friends, and finds one of their discussions about soulmates to be compelling. It’s always been a sore subject for her, but from them it’s different.

There’s this one story I like a lot, Naegi Makoto says avidly while pointing at the passage of a book, my sister’s girlfriend is the author. I swear it’s really good.

She skims over it and finds herself unable to stop.

— _Reed waits because she can. Because her patience was limitless and her adoration even more. “What have you brought me”, she would say to Lila, her love, “have you brought me more sorrows to drown in?” And her hand would dart to the taller god’s shoulders like it belonged there, smiling wide and kind._

_“No,” Lila said, “I merely bring myself.” The honesty is not without a price—her life oozing from her fingers like melting wax. “This world may say otherwise, but I always know I only come to you.”_

_And the meadows would greet them, the daffodils caressing their legs_ —

“This book is set in a god-fantasy setting, but the circumstances are like ours!” The philosophy major taps on the table excitedly, and he reminds Aoi how she and Yuta would act like on Christmas. She almost giggles.

“Oh?” She finds herself doing the same thing he’s doing anyway. “Tell me more!”

“Well, Reed and Lila are soulmates to different people but they still get together,” Makoto says softly, “it’s kind of like Byakuya and I.”

Aoi virtually chokes on her drink when she realizes what he means.

(I think the world is overripe in romanticizing tattoos, he asserts and she nods with him, it shouldn’t be so adamant in revolving an entire lifetime around it. It’s still going to be a choice _you_ make, not destiny. Jeez, why is this an unpopular opinion?

I get it, she thinks of saying.)

_The soul has chosen and chosen for itself, Lila, let it be known that it is my choice in the end that will decide how I love_ , he writes in a small notebook, _slash the controversial So Lingers the Ocean by Fukawa Toko_ —it’s my favorite line here, he mumbles—and Aoi is so caught up in figuring out what it means that she almost jumps when she hears Byakuya chime in.

“She wouldn’t truly understand,” he says while pushing up his glasses, “she’s not like us. Why tell her this?”

“Didn’t I tell you? She’s the one Kyoko talks about. They’re the same.” Makoto says. And Byakuya looks at her with an unreadable expression. Business majors weren’t so intimidating to her, but this one sells it pretty well.

“Yeah,” she chuckles nervously, “no tattoos here.”

Byakuya rolls his eyes and says nothing else, but the small sliver of sympathy in his eyes say differently.

(These two were different.

Very different. Rare, actually.

She’s glad they met.)

There’s no need for any pretense here.

“How can you love someone you’re not supposed to?” She asks on the fifth day they gather together, and Kyoko’s running late due to a seminar; it’s only the three of them again so she takes the chance.

Makoto stares at her.

It didn’t come out in the way she wants it to sound, but frankly nothing really does. Ever since Kyoko.

“We can’t say.” It’s surprisingly Byakuya who answers, uncharacteristically gentle and there’s no real heat in his voice. “I used to think I knew how things worked, before I met Makoto. Before I met Kyoko. And now before I met you.”

He stays silent for a while.

“But take it from us two,” he finally says, glancing at her with an honest expression. “Things will be clear if you decide resisting is easier than it sounds or how this world makes it out to be.”

_Oh, how easy it would be, to take these flowers, breathe life into them, and call it hers._

“Huh?” Her mouth thins into a tight line, crinkling the corner of her eyes. “What do you mean by that?”

He scoffs, but it’s softer than what the action merits. “From how fondly Kyoko speaks of you, I believed you were at least bright in some way. Make use of your brain cells.”

Aoi pouts.

Makoto sighs and elbows his boyfriend half-heartedly.

“I think what he meant to say was,” he turns to her with a small smile, “it’s okay to say that fate sucks sometimes and disregard it altogether.”

* * *

She and Kyoko make it more than a year without snapping, without thinking of the missing inks that should be slithering on their skins, and _yeah, she could care less._ It’s right to say that they’ve ended up weaving so much parts of their lives into each other that the bond is thicker than rope, tighter than thread.

(They’ve never said the L-word though. Or maybe they were just avoiding it and this was the breaking point.)

It’s hard to think of what life she had before they met—she can’t get enough of Kyoko. Aoi would link their fingers, hug her arm, bury her face in her chest, wants to believe all of this belonged to her while also knowing it didn’t. But hey, she’s decided fate was meaningless now—if they weren’t meant for anyone at all, then _suck on this_.

Aoi’s never been this busy.

She doesn’t mind.

She uses her five-year old bicycle and rides to Kyoko’s apartment on the weekends, backpack filled with clothes and sometimes a portion of it will call Kyoko’s closet their new home. She’s learned how to cook more than just fried things, introduced Makoto and Byakuya to her own group of friends, and somehow she’s coerced Kyoko into jogging with her on mornings and what works best when.

They would spend one forenoon watching the leaves fall at a nearby park; they’re beautiful, Kyoko points out. They look like oil trickling from a palette. I want to feel so much of it—I can see them bleeding out from you.

Aoi would laugh.

You don’t get it, Kyoko would say again. It’s a drawing beyond the canvas.

No, no, I get it, she would bite back, almost cackling. I just can’t believe you’re such a romantic.

(And they go back to the apartment giggling to each other like a bunch of bored teenagers.)

She playfully pushes Kyoko into the couch and settles on top of her lap, Kyoko’s hair somewhat dishevelled from her previous all-nighter and Aoi’s lips dry from dehydration. “I wondered,” Kyoko says, her little smile lopsided and sincere, “I’ve always wondered what forever looked like. I have a clear picture now.”

“God,” Aoi whines, her stone blue eyes softer than any cushion in the room. “Kyoko. You—you can’t say things like that.”

“All of this,” Kyoko mumbles in the crook of her neck, pulling her closer as her arms snake around Aoi’s waist, “it’s yours. All of it.” _All of me_.

“No,” she says helplessly. “Don't you dare.”

Her pleas remain ignored.

“This is,” Kyoko whispers as she cups Aoi’s cheeks, and she feels her heartbeat sitting right inside her ears, “this is the sun.”

“This,” her hands—the gloves are off and her scars out in the open—trail to her collarbone, Kyoko’s eyes are brighter than they’ve ever been, the purple blending into the night and Aoi keeps her gasp locked in her mouth fearing that this moment would be ruined, “this is the moon.”

There is little to no sound except for their breathing.

She goes to Aoi’s hands, holds them like a lost treasure, as if any moment the throbbing of their chests could devour them and swallow them whole. Kyoko’s voice was soft and reverent in a way that no one else in this world can imitate nor conceive. “This is the stars.”

Finally, Kyoko’s hands stop right at her chest. At her heart.

“And this is the universe.”

(And this is what you are to me.)

“This is how much you mean to me.”

To us.

(I’ve cherished you even before the sky was given a name.)

“You can’t just do this,” Aoi says weakly. Hears Kyoko’s thoughts and denies them aloud with the will she has left, the distance between them slowly vanishing like chalk in the wind. “You can’t say you’re in love with me. You can’t.”

She breathes, feeling Kyoko’s heart beating against her own, their lifelines thrashing in sync. Now all Aoi just wants is to fall apart, look at her soul and say _you._ It’s you _,_ isn’t it?

_Why wasn’t it you?_

"Don't." Aoi whispers.

Kyoko’s mouth is close enough that she feels it move.

“Too late.”

* * *

Aoi’s aware that Sakura knows, knows how much it hurts. She’s one of the only people with the luxury to find them in their moments alone, watching galaxies cover the space and recognize each other in the little place they call theirs, giving new definitions to magnetism entirely. Aoi wants. Simply wants. So she entwines her fingers with Kyoko’s own, gawks at the radiance in her eyes. The actions seems so sacred, so intimate, like she was living in a temple made for two.

A delicate blush spreads across Sakura’s cheeks, and she looks away.

It’s night, eleven, and Sakura catches them in the living room of their shared dorm space— _shared_ being in past tense is an emphasis—with a lot of boxes neatly arranged at one corner of the living room, ready to be moved out. Kyoko was helping her with her thesis, but the former’s fallen asleep on her shoulder thirty minutes ago so it was only Aoi awake by then.

Aoi types in slowly, occasionally stopping to kiss the crown of Kyoko’s hair or look at the list of corrections she was given to do, and sometimes the kiss would either change to her girlfriend’s forehead or the lobe of her ear, and she knows Sakura, even if she was just at the door, can feel how much love is poured in each and every one.

Aoi glances up, catches her staring. She waves, and puts a finger against her mouth in a shushing motion, and Sakura waves back with a small smile on her face.

“I’ve never met a couple like you two,” her best friend murmurs, “I didn’t think destiny can be proven wrong. But looking at you two is making me reconsider.”

(Destiny, she whispers that part again menacingly, and Aoi tries to hold her laugh in.)

“Honestly? Fuck that,” Aoi giggles quietly. “If she and I aren’t soulmates, then what the hell are we?”

Aoi sees the certainty behind Sakura’s eyes, and watches it light up.

“I think,” Sakura says softly, “I think you two are more than that.”

She makes it sound so simple, so maybe it is.

_She takes these flowers, breathes life into them and at last calls it hers._

Aoi nods. “Yeah.”

I think so too.

* * *

(They’ve honestly gone way too far at this rate. It’s the end of their fourth year—deadlines were stacked one after another—and in the little time they had for each other they stay up late talking as if sleep didn’t matter at all.

It gets to silly tangents, really—like what if two detectives were hired to investigate each other, if Aoi could get a donut in the shape of those chain puzzle rings tattooed on her shoulder, if janitor fish get overtime—and it doesn’t always end in the sound of laughter, sometimes the conversations end in a comfortable peace or the music of serenity.)

“You felt this, didn’t you?” She asks one morning, the hours still early so the world was blue more than gold; Kyoko holds her close. Moonlight drips onto her shoulders, and it’s as if someone was doing so, like paint spilling on paper. “It’s like I’ve seen you somewhere. Like—like we’ve met before. It's like what we saw in the news.”

Kyoko hums in affirmation.

“I’ve only heard of it recently,” Aoi says, tracing the kanji of her name onto Kyoko’s collarbones, “it’s a breakthrough. Some group apparently discovered one kind of soulmates, very rare ones, that don’t change across the lifetimes. It’s constant, not like the tattoos.”

She hears Kyoko’s jaws click at the top of her head. “I remember we joked about this once, but if I assume correctly, are you implying that you think we are…?”

Aoi’s quiet for a moment, letting the idea sink into the both of them comfortably without words.

“My god.” She swallows the lump in her throat. “We are.”

Kyoko looks down and meets Aoi’s eyes in the light of the early morning.

(Her want is wide, but she crosses it. The heart, it closes and opens. It gasps. It lurks in her chest. And she said, heart pulsating against the walls of her ribcage, with the most loving of voices: I was in love with you before time even began.)

“Aoi,” Kyoko whispers, “I think I’ll fall in love with you again regardless.”

(I always knew.)

She smiles, then kisses Kyoko to remind herself where home is.

* * *

"Do you think we have this conversation in all our past lifetimes, or is this a special thing?"

"No," Kyoko shakes her head, "I believe it's in all of them."

* * *

Nothing breathes in this moment. Time has stopped moving, the earth has stopped spinning, no, they have ceased existing entirely. “I knew it,” Aoi says, remembering bumping into twenty year old Kyoko, tall and lanky and lesser coffee in her bloodstream, the essence of the world dribbling from her hands, “I knew there was something about you.” She whispers it to her and her only.

“I didn’t question why I liked red.” Kyoko says, tugging at Aoi’s hands like it was a lifeline. “So it was you.”

(Just then, she feels right on the verge of something, from her words alone.)

“I looked at you and—and I can’t describe it. It was _everything_ to me.” There’s more Aoi has to say (that she somehow knew then and there that Kyoko was going to be a part of her, and she was alive, even though it was for meager minutes), but Kyoko reads this easily so she kisses her cheek and lets the warmth make its home.

(Just then, she was in a room looking at herself when she was fifteen, and she, twenty-two, Asahina Aoi, tells her everything, eyes wide and bright and kind, that _yes, yes, there was something there_. Look at these flowers and these colors closely, she says, they mean so much to you.)

The affection thrums, the pulse hammering quick underneath her skin, strong enough to bruise; because now they have the truth, they have the answer. They’ve lived for twenty years, even more across countless lifetimes, and they still can’t get enough of each other.

_The hyacinths will be in full bloom come spring._

“All this time,” Kyoko whispers. “It’s _you_. It was always you.”

(And they were somewhere, in that place, right where they were meant to be.)

“I think,” she whispers back. “I always knew that I belonged to you.”

After that, she waits no more.

— _And Reed,_ a passage from Fukawa Toko’s So Lingers the Ocean would say, _Reed, this is Lila speaking, it’s time to come home. I’ve waited long enough._

**Author's Note:**

> no beta, but thank you to aran for being the wall to bounce my ideas off of.


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